Day of the Dead and Halloween

Come to me in the silence of the night;

Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,

Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
~ Echo, by Christina Rossetti

Disclaimer: This chapter is an example of creative license. Because Nicholas and Veronica had to leave before
Halloween, but because their Day of the Dead rite was amongst our dearest memories of this trip, I have
rearranged time to suit myself, and in the world of this story, they stayed til Halloween, were asleep during
the birthday party, and have woken up again. As if that werent license enough, we also need to relate their
harrowing trip to NC, since I skipped the journey bit of the story earlier. So lets all imagine that they also re-
arrived on Halloween. Clear as mud? Good! Mud is good for the skin, Im told.

Originally, Nicholas and Veronica were to meet my flight in, driving through the early morning from NH to NC.
Due to a series of unfortunate events, they were delayed substantially. I believe the story is best told by Nova
the valiant new canine member of the Conley family. I have taken more creative license with her voice, but I
believe that it is an accurate rendition, at least in the world of this story.

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Greetings and Salutations. I am happy to meet members of the Feeding
Womans faithful readership, and hope to maintain an acquaintanceship
with you over time, during any adventures in which I am included. In my
opinion, that should be all of them, but alas, I am a dominated species,
and may only travel at the pleasure of The Pair.

Allow me to introduce The Pair. I speak of them such because they have
two voices, heads as it were, but they are never apart, and as you can
see from this revolting shot, in which they balance some sort of diseased
fruit between their tongues, partake of everything as one.

I forgive them much of this, as they are very good to me for the most
part, although certain incidents have occurred, of which the preceding
tale is a prime example that give one pause for thought

This particular story begins at an ungodly hour of the morning, when the
only reasonable activity would be to howl at the moon if one were to
recapture ones lupine nature at the beginning of all creation.

The Pair ingested a good deal of the insalubrious swill they call coffee,
and offered none of it to me, although I was given some basic food and
water. They locked me into the straightjacket they keep in the carriage
for me (they call it a harness, but it hinders movement, so it is not a
harness).

The scenery was more or less like this for a good bit of time, and I
determined to catch a wink or two of slumber. This is difficult when the
SheHead of The Pair is driving, as she has a propensity for crashing
merrily into poles or houses or anything else that arises, vertically, across
her path.

This time, the HeHead was at the wheel however, and it was quiet except
for the incessant braying of their directional device advising the HeHead
to to turn about and try another path.
At a certain point, some ancient tingle of danger woke me from my
slumbers, and I realized that the carriage and directional device had both
stopped.

The Pair were frantically dialing on their telephonic devices, and

squabbling randomly about what to do. HeHead got out and fiddled
uselessly inside the carriage interior, SheHead began to emit waterfalls
from her eyes.

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After a goodish amount of time, a Thing came with lights on it, to the
rescue, I assumed. With great gnashing of gears and scratching of
hitches, it attached itself to our carriage, or perhaps it was the other way
around.

The Pair were arguing with its coachman and SheHead wept more
copiously. Then they entered the Thing, and I realized to my utmost
horror that I was to be left in the damaged carriage by myself, still firmly
attached to the harness!

As you can well imagine, I allowed my indignation at this turn of events

to overwhelm my usual ladylike restraint, but to no avail.

The Thing carried the carriage, with me bumping along within it for a
short distance, and then came to a screeching halt in front of a building
with lights. I believe it was another of The Pairs coffee shops; they make
a point of stopping at any and all of these they pass.

The Pair rescued me and we stood about in the cold outside while
SheHead consulted with various persons on her telephonic device. I
figured that sooner or later some member of SheHeads copious and
amiable family would arrive, and wed be back on our way.
Instead, the foul Thing, its hour come again, returned.

The coachman was not the same, however, he smelled entirely

differently. Where the first had reeked of despair and the torture of
small things in the night, this coachman reminded me of green hills and
the production of sticks to catch and a strong good hand that knows
where to scratch.
We were taken to Aunt Marys house, where I was fed and given a place
to sleep for an hour or two, and once the sun rose, The Pair squabbled a
bit more, and then came to a decision, I suppose, as a brand new and
rather wonderful carriage arrived, with stickers that said rental on it.

From there, we had a long, long journey, The Pair stopping for coffee
whenever they could, and a big bowl of the hard lumps they usually feed
me available, and occasional stops for sanitary matters that need not be
discussed so early in our acquaintanceship to take place.

And at length, we arrived at the Green Tree place, where my small

associate Pepper was pleased to greet me.

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 The following day, a party was held in my honor, no doubt to celebrate
my stoicism during the horrible events I had endured.

The Pair danced about with cone hats and singing a disagreeable song,
and fed me this steak. They also gifted me with an enormous squeak,
very generous, and useful for venting ones frustrations upon when
sorely tried.

They are, after all, a goodish type, The Pair, and for the most part, I am
pleased to be of their company.

Veronicholas (this is a first attempt at a portmanteau name for The Pair) began to practice a very beautiful rite
for Day of the Dead last year. Here is the gist in Veronicas words.

We call it Day of the Dead: Circle of Remembrance It's our

second annual. Usually we do it on November 1st.

That's our altar for it at home. It involves mums and

marigolds, copal resin intense, chocolates for the dead,
photos of our dead and church votives and skulls we paint
with a loved one in
mind to signify their
spirit in a way.

We have photos of
our loved ones, and the intention is to light a candle for each person
and share remembrances.

Then we make bread of the dead which bakes as we do the circle of

remembrance (we raise the dead by breathing life into their spirit
with recounting memories as the bread raises in the oven ) it's a
special sweet bread we only make on Nov 1st.

In our case, we couldnt have lit candles due to the proximity of oxygen tanks, and we didnt have time to back
the bread, but the spirit of the event was still beautiful. We had photos of those weve lost and we went
around the circle discussing memories, some sad, some funny, all bitter-sweet. If anybody wants to get
Veronicas recipe for the bread, let me know, and I will email it to you (once she returns from Paris and emails
it to me, that is!)

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Weve already seen Martinas costume in the last chapter. She and I tried out a lot of different folds and
draping techniques for the costume. We had discussed tattering it for perfect verisimilitude to the original, but
the final draping looked so nice, we decided against
it. The sword is real, and its a good thing nobody
tried to trick us! We had to stuff things into that
massive horn to make it stand up like that.

The front of the mask is completely terrifying and hot

as hell to wear!

In frosty Michigan, baby Teresa wore a special handmade costume sewn from
scratch by her loving Mommy to celebrate her adoration of Shawn the sheep.

Back in NC, Aunt Diana decided she didnt want to get into all the witch garb again
and instead donned warm footed tiger pajamas. And then painted her face to look
like Percy the cat, using eye shadow. Which all
melted together into a sort of black, insane blur,
like that sad cat who sings Memory in the musical
Cats, if she had been dunked under a bucket of lye
several times.

It was cold and the driveways in Morganton are

vast, illy lit and treacherous. Steve drove us to the beginnings of the blocks and
Martina marched to each door with ease, whilst Aunt Diana fell over roots,

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limped and eventually crawled to each door until Martina kindly said to stop and sit in the car with Papa.

And all thats left of the tale is the return home, but that involves the great fun of driving with Patsy with no
map and her refusal to take freeways for a refreshing long joy ride through most of North Carolina. Coming
soon!